Preface

We’re a regeneration, placemaking and architectural practice. Our focus is community engagement and placemaking, initially we’ll focus on catalysts to build client networks and increase workload. We’ll look at placemaking literature which highlights catalyst’s importance, i.e. Hamdi’s 2010 “Placemaker’s Guide to Building Community” and explore entrepreneurial practice, i.e. within the ‘The Future for Architects?’ report (Jamieson, 2011) and ‘Emerging Methods of Architecture Practice’ (Scharphie. 2014). An example is our intervention proposals (Figure 01) for the Richard Hamilton School of Arts at Oxford Brookes. The estates department asked us to provide proposals to strengthen and maintain the school’s resilience during the redevelopment of the adjacent building, we focused on a community/user-driven design process, incorporating placemaking and community engagement techniques.

Figure 01: Flexi-Space Perspective from Side Path, Part of Temporary Interventions at the Richard Hamilton School of Art (Goacher, 2017).